Going Home

A year ago today. Do we look tired or what?

This post is late in coming today. Peter had an appointment at the pediatrician this afternoon to get another R.S.V. shot. The Dr. came in and talked to me because she was concerned that Peter has lost 2 ounces since last month. I was very concerned too. She said it could be just that he is so active (and he is - literally on the move every waking moment). She said to watch it over the next month. I went grocery shopping tonight and bought Peter some multi-vitamins, some Carnation Instant Breakfast to add to his milk, and as much "bulk" food as I thought he could handle. Please be in prayer about this. Lost weight is not good news, especially when I've been dealing with a lot of emotions about Peter this week anyway.

This day a year ago, we were going home. We still had to deal with open-heart surgery, but we were SO relieved to just be home, sleep in our own beds, and be together as a family. That morning as Tom was getting ready and Peter was sleeping, I was flipping around on the hospital T.V. when I found some Christian teaching. The lesson was on facing your greatest fears - so timely! I still can't imagine anything worse than the loss of your child.

Tom and Peter and I were finally able to go home in the afternoon. Once home, poor Tom had to head back to the emergency room with a terrible case of the flu that I'm sure he caught in the hospital. Thankfully, no one else caught it. The day after we came home, Dr. Watts called with the surgical plan. He said he wanted to try to attach the pulmonary artery and not necessarily close the VSD - the difference being either heart surgery (where the heart itself is not stopped and cut into) or open-heart surgery (where the heart is stopped and the body is put on the heart/lung bypass machine while the heart is operated on). Dr. Watts said we could use medication to try to get the VSD to close on its own over time (months), but if that didn't work, then Peter would have to go back to have open-heart surgery at a later date and close the VSD. He said this plan was tentative because it would largely depend on how things went once he was in the operating room. Tom and I both were torn, although we completely agreed with his analysis and to proceed according to his suggestions the following Tuesday. We were torn because in one sense, we wanted to avoid open-heart surgery if at all possible. However, we didn't want to subject Peter to heart surgery, just to have him need to be opened back up again in six months. This made our prayers very clear - God would determine which of those options was best.

Two days after we came home we had to go back to the hospital for Peter's pre-op appointments (chest X-ray, blood draw, etc.). This was an exhausting day! I held Peter for almost the entire day and I remember thinking that my arms should be tired from holding him so much, but Peter was so light it was no effort to carry him around all day long.

We had basically five days at home and we spent those days resting and preparing for the next leg of the journey. People made so many meals for us that we had to send food to my parents. Our greatest challenge over those five days was getting Peter's four medications in him. Twice a day, it was an agonizing ritual. Peter (to this day) has a strong gag reflex, plus those medications taste horrible, and of course, Peter was only two months old. We dreaded medicine time, and more than once they came back up again, which made me so afraid because Peter needed those to literally sustain his life, yet I didn't dare to give them again and risk overdosing him.

On the whole, our five days at home were restful and peaceful. It was a time to get rejuvinated - a time to just be. My mom came over and helped us out a lot. She was a huge help. She also got to spend some special one-on-one time with Peter. He was a joy the whole time.